Queries about vB to xF conversation and it's impact on SEO

K

Khaleal

Active member
Hello!

I am the owner of a vBulletin4 forum (classic) with about 30k of threads and 300k of posts.
After the rubbish that IB lately introduced (vBulletin5) I'd say that I will never upgrade! And because they have no reason to continue the development on vBulletin4 I would seriously look for alternatives.
Lets be honest! Both xenForo and IPB are better than vBulletin! They offer some great futures that vBulletin doesn't offer with great performance over vBulletin.
I started to test out IPB, it looks cool and funny and provides a wide range of add-ons and skins that beat xF's ones (even their default style is usable for a professional forum unlike xF's)! their pricing is a bit more expensive than xF (the basic fees) while the renewal fees are the double! Anyway, the pricing isn't an issue for me.
After that, I started to test out xF, the first thing I've noticed is the performance, in fact, it's incredibly fast! I liked the alerts function and how PMs are being displayed. something bad to mention about xF is it's skin structure. it's very basic and not professional, and the professional skins made by 3rd parties are quit few and can't be compared to those for IPB!
That was a small review and compensation between IPB and xF. Lets now go to the real subject :)
The real problem of the conversation (to xF or to IPB) is that about 92% from my visitors come from search engines! so, SEO is the most important side for me! especially that I got the first results with many good keywords which took me a very long time to get.
I've seen some reviews about converting vBs to IPB and most of the writers mentioned that they noticed a huge drop in their search engines traffic. that's why I came here to xenForo and not to IPB.
My question is, what is going to happen with my daily 30k+ of unique visitors?! and what will happen to my rankings with the good keywords mentioned above? I have a huge number of threads with PR4+ what will happen with them?
But please, before you reply, I don't need a "calm down xF SEO is good" replies! I would like to see real stories about conversations from vB to xF and it's impact on their traffic. it would be good if the stories are provided with traffic reports showing the month when the forum was converted.
BTW, I've used vBulletin without vBSEO and have the standard URLs (forumdisplay.php and showthread.php URLs)

A quick additional question: Does xF provide a converter from vBulletin 4.1.11 to the latest xenForo release?

I am so sorry for the very long thread, but I am really concerned about my forum's future after the conversation.
Thanks in advance to those members will reply with their stories (and even for who won't ;)) and I am also sorry for any English mistakes, I am not a native speaker :)
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Thanks for your reply!
I am aware that 301 redirects will simply redirect the old pages to the new ones peremintly.
But what if the pages were redirected and search engins found xenForo's SEO to be worst than vBUlletin's?! The traffic comes from search engins will start to drop! And thats why I am asking these questions in the pre-sales forum.
All what I need is a real story shows the traffic just before the conversation and just after the conversation. I would appreciate that.
Also, if anyone has converted to xF from vB is welcomed to post his forum URL and the date when he performed the conversation. Maybe his Alexa statics help :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks again for your reply.
I've read the guy's review, and it sounds good although the screenshots from his GA account aren't clear.
I would like to hear more from people who have migrated huge boards. This information would be appreciated :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
From a technical standpoint XenForo is far ahead of the competition in regards to SEO. What I mean by that is their HTML structure, use of HTML5 and use of newer SEO features. When it comes to the code XenForo is ahead with SEO easily. In use I have nothing to report though.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
vB4 with vBSEO to XF Beta 1 brought me an instant boost in Google with zero redirects.. Seriously it was the smartest move i made for my community.. As a matter of fact i can even go so far as to say not one single member complained about the change.. XF was a hit with my members from day one, and still to this day (two years later) i still get a significant amount of praise almost daily about the software and how good it is.. Another strong point is that i can also say with certainty that new members stay active for a much longer period of time then they ever did on vB4
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
XenForo's SEO is very good. Examples:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/semantic-html.892/
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/html-5-microdata-in-breadcrumb.12347/

As for the effects of a conversion... most experiences I have seen indictate that your traffic will go down slightly after the conversion, but will increase later once Google updates their records from your redirects. It's a net positive for almost everyone, especially in terms of user engagement. Here are some vB comparisons:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-caching-amazing.32629/
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/server-load-vb-xf-joomla-proof-is-everything.8073/
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/xf-software-trumped-user-popularity-over-vb4.15378/

One thing to note is that XenForo is much more efficient with page loads, so even if your actual traffic stays the same you can expect a decrease in page views due to XenForo's use of AJAX which avoids many full page loads.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks to the redirects we didn't really loose any search traffic and our Google traffic is in an upward trend.

Also like Jake said your page views will most likely decrease, however your visits will stay the same (or increase). With page views down and visitors the same, visit duration still increased.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Robbo said:
From a technical standpoint XenForo is far ahead of the competition in regards to SEO. What I mean by that is their HTML structure, use of HTML5 and use of newer SEO features. When it comes to the code XenForo is ahead with SEO easily. In use I have nothing to report though.
Click to expand...
That's why I chose xF over IPB!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
VonDoom said:
vB4 with vBSEO to XF Beta 1 brought me an instant boost in Google with zero redirects.. Seriously it was the smartest move i made for my community.. As a matter of fact i can even go so far as to say not one single member complained about the change.. XF was a hit with my members from day one, and still to this day (two years later) i still get a significant amount of praise almost daily about the software and how good it is.. Another strong point is that i can also say with certainty that new members stay active for a much longer period of time then they ever did on vB4
Click to expand...
Do you mean you didn't redirect the old vB links to xF's? This was a bad decision in my opinion!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
DBA said:
Thanks to the redirects we didn't really loose any search traffic and our Google traffic is in an upward trend.

Also like Jake said your page views will most likely decrease, however your visits will stay the same (or increase). With page views down and visitors the same, visit duration still increased.
Click to expand...
I am aware that 301 redirects would redirect your old traffic to the new pages, but the question is what will happen with good ranking pages! I've worked for a very long time building backlinks to these pages and concerned if I'll lose my rankings for these pages :(
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
As for the effects of a conversion... most experiences I have seen indictate that your traffic will go down slightly after the conversion, but will increase later once Google updates their records from your redirects. It's a net positive for almost everyone, especially in terms of user engagement.
Click to expand...
This is all what I need! a brief description of the process, thank you bro :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Khaleal said:
Thanks for your reply. But your forum barely gets 250 daily visitors and can not be taken as a measure. I would like to hear from huge forums owners :)
Click to expand...
Um. Going from vB4 to xenForo turning over 30,000 unique visitors, and visitors? Yeah, quite big.

I have more members than there are "average" visitors as you say.

vB4 killed any traffic I had left coming from vB3. Keep that in mind, as well.

BTW, there's something called an edit button, ya know. Triple posts, holy cow!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Carlos said:
Um. Going from vB4 to xenForo turning over 30,000 unique visitors, and visitors? Yeah, quite big.

I have more members than there are "average" visitors as you say.

vB4 killed any traffic I had left coming from vB3. Keep that in mind, as well.

BTW, there's something called an edit button, ya know. Triple posts, holy cow!
Click to expand...
Your GA screenshots say that you have about 250 daily visitors not me.
BTW, it's DAILY 30,000 unique visitors, the number of members is about 140,000.
Even that we restrict posting threads for members with less than 25 posts we are getting a huge number of posts. So a major migration would affect everything!
Thanks again for your reply :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Khaleal said:
Your GA screenshots say that you have about 250 daily visitors not me.
Click to expand...
The way you said it make it sound embarrassing. So, for me, it's offensive. I worked really hard to regain all of the loss from vB4's horrendous releases. I spent a thousand dollars to own the site, only to have a corporation destroy the hits and visits of the site with a shoddy release.
BTW, it's DAILY 30,000 unique visitors, the number of members is about 140,000.
Click to expand...
Great! I'm trying to help you but the way you're saying things; it makes it seem like you're putting my site down. Show a little bit more respect next time.
Even that we restrict posting threads for members with less than 25 posts we are getting a huge number of posts. So a major migration would affect everything!
Click to expand...
Expect a turnout then.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Carlos said:
The way you said it make it sound embarrassing. So, for me, it's offensive. I worked really hard to regain all of the loss from vB4's horrendous releases. I spent a thousand dollars to own the site, only to have a corporation destroy the hits and visits of the site with a shoddy release.

Great! I'm trying to help you but the way you're saying things; it makes it seem like you're putting my site down. Show a little bit more respect next time.

Expect a turnout then.
Click to expand...
I am so sorry if you are embarrassed. I didn't thought it would be understood this way :) As I mentioned in the thread, I am not a native speaker.. and I still do not know the power of words in English.. it seems to be more powerful than my language's :) I am sorry again.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

Similar threads

Jim McClain
  • Question Question
XF 1.5 Convert vB Usergroups to xF User Groups
Replies
3
Views
886
Chris D
Chris D
N
  • Question Question
vB 3.8.x > XF: Impact on Revenue?
2
Replies
30
Views
3K
rdn
R
Back
Top Bottom